"George O. Smith - Stop Look and Dig" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith George O)

one more charge. I tried to dig it but couldn't. Even a Doctor Of Perception can't really dig the number of
kilo-watt-seconds[pg 064] in a meson chamber.

My accurate esping must have made the other guy desperate, because he made a dive and let his needle
ray burn out a slashing beam that zipped across over my head. My forty-five blazed twice. He missed but
I didn't, just as the throb of the stun-gun rang the air again. I whirled to face my stun-gun coming out of
the bedroom door in front of Martha Franklin.


The slug intended for Martha's body never came out of my gun because her stun-gun got to me first. It
froze me like a hunk of Greek statuary and I went forward and toppled over until I came on a three-point
landing of elbow, the opposite knee, and the side of my face.

I was as good as dead.

My brain was still functioning but nothing else was. I was completely paralyzed. My heart had stopped
breathing and my lungs had stopped breathing, and I've been told that a healthy man can retain
consciousness for maybe a minute or so without a fresh supply of blood to the brain. Then things get
muddy black and you've had it for good. My esp was still functioning, but that would black out with the
rest of Steve Hammond.

There was no physical pain. They could have drilled me with a blunt two-by-four and I'd not have felt it.

Then because I couldn't stare Death in the face, I shut my mind on the fact and esped my late girl friend.
She was standing there with my stun-gun in her hand with a smile on her beautiful puss and that vibrant
body swaying gently. I wanted to vomit and I would have if I'd not been frozen solid. That beautiful body
presided over by that vicious brain made me sick.

Her smile faded as I began to realize the truth. Her story was thin. Rambaugh, a mental, would have been
able to play his blackmail game to the fine degree; he would have known when Martha's patience was
about to grow short--if Martha's story were true. No blackmailer pushed his victim to the breaking point.
And Rambaugh wouldn't have gone for me if this had just been a plain case of blackmail.

No, by thinking deeply, Martha Franklin had engineered the death of Rambaugh and she'd almost
engineered the rubbing-out of Scarmann. A mental, Martha Franklin. A high-grade mental, capable of
controlling her thoughts so that her cohorts could be led by the mind into doing her dirty work.

My mind chuckled. I'd be gone[pg 065] before they caught up with Martha, but they'd catch up all right.
She'd leave the apartment positively radiating her act of violence and then the cops would have a catch.
And you should see how a set of Court Mentalists go to work on a guilty party these days. Once they get
the guy that pulled the trigger on the witness stand, in front of a jury consisting of mixed mentals and
espers, with no holds barred, the court record gets a full load of the killer's life, adventures, habits, and
attitude; just before the guilty party heads for the readjustment chamber.


Things were growing blacker. Waves of darkness clouded my mind and I found it hard to think straight.
My esper sense faded first and as it faded I let it run once more over Martha's attractiveness and found
my darkening mind wishing that she were the girl I'd believed her to be instead of the female louse she
was. It could have been fun.